Three Ayres from Gloucester

I. The Jolly Earl of Cholmondeley - II. Ayre for Evertide - III. The Fiefs of Wembley

Hugh M. Stuart (1917 - 2006)

Stuart received his music training from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Columbia Teachers College, Rutgers University, Newark State College, and the University of Michigan. He taught instrumental music in the schools of Maryland and New Jersey for 33 years. During this time he conducted several brass bands and ensembles. He also taught at various clinics and workshops for winds. Stuart wrote more than 100 published compositions, arrangements, method books, band and orchestral collections, solos, and ensembles in the educational field. He appeared as a clinician in forty-five states. He lived in Albuquerque, N.M. until his death on Jan. 31, 2006 at the age of 89.

Three Ayres from Gloucester is a three-movement suite written in the early English folk song style, this piece came into being as a result of the composer's fascination with an old 10th century couplet: "There's no one quite so comely As the Jolly Earl of Cholmondeley." The resulting three movements, The Jolly Earl of Cholmondeley [pronounced "Chumley"], Ayre for Eventide, and The Fiefs of Wembley, are in early English folk song style and are designed to capture the mood of the peasants and their life on the fiefs of Wembley castle.

Soloists: Sophia Bian - Flute, Jerry Guo - Clarinet, Stephen Zhang - Trumpet, Keegan Green - Horn, Alice Ouellette - Horn

Joyful Variants

Naoya Wada (b. 1986)

Naoya Wada was born in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Japan in 1986. As an internationally recognized composer, he has been commissioned numerous times to write for band, ensembles, and radio programs, and often works as a guest conductor and clinician. He is one of the few Japanese composers making significant contributions to educational band music.

This piece was written to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). The work is based on the theme of “Ode to Joy”, with musical quotations from several other beloved works of this master composer. Included, in order, are the “Third Symphony (Eroica)”, “Piano Sonata No. 8 (Pathetique)”, “Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor)”, “Fifth Symphony”, “Fur Elise”, “Sixth Symphony (Pastoral)”, and the “Piano Sonata No. 21 (Waldstein)”.

As The Moon Whispers

Benjamin Yeo (b. 1985)

Benjamin Yeo is a Singaporean composer-conductor who is internationally known for his original wind band works. Being very active in the local band scene, he has guest-performed for many professional groups on the trumpet, as well as guest-conducted various ensembles in Singapore. His experience in band directing has enabled him to work with students across a wide spectrum of educational institutions. As a conductor, he has learned under the mentorship of prominent professors in the field such as Dr. Mallory Thompson, Dr. Steven Davis and Dr. Shawn Vondran from the USA.

Benjamin started writing and arranging music for wind bands and ensembles at the age of fifteen before learning under the tutelage of his principal teacher, Dr. Kelly Tang and seminars under Dr. Zechariah Goh. His works have since been performed in both local and overseas festivals/concerts, and have also been featured on both national and international platforms. He has also been invited to serve as an adjudicator for events such as the Junior Band Festival in Singapore and the All Chinese Wind Band Competition in Taiwan. Benjamin is very active as a guest clinician and conductor with invitations locally and overseas.

This expressive work paints a musical picture of a young child sleeping soundly beside the window, listening to the whispering voice of the moon. It is a windy night, with rustlings of leaves from the nearby lonely tree that breaks the otherwise silent night. The moon watches over the child, whispering to him to take good care of himself from the chilly winds. Raindrops start to fall and the moon loses sight of the child as rain clouds begin to hinder its vision. The moon struggles to see the child, “take care my child, take care…”, the moon whispered. He seemed to have heard the moon as he opened his eyes slowly and returned with a smile.

Soloists: Linna Xia - Flute, Chris Brown - Trumpet

Overture for Winds

Charles Carter (1926 - 1999)

Carter is regarded as a prolific composer for concert bands. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree from The Ohio State University, and his Master of Music degree from Eastman School of Music. Many of Carter’s pieces are standards in the concert band repertoire. Overture for Winds (written in 1959) was given its title by the publishers. This three-part overture has remained Carter’s most popular composition for band. The opening section has a theme which is robust and rhythmic in character. The second theme, slightly slower and expressive, is a free form based on motives of the original idea. The last section is a repetition of the opening thematic ideas, building to a final climax. Carter’s Overture takes on a musical theater approach stylistically, with wildly extroverted material in both the bombastic opening and the flowing middle section.

Scenes from the Louvre

I. Portals - II. Children's Gallery - III. Kings of France

Norman Dello Joio (1913 - 2008)

Born in 1913 into a long line of Italian musicians, Norman Dello Joio followed quickly in his family’s footsteps. His father was an opera coach and organist; by age 12, young Norman was substituting for his father on organ jobs. He went to Juilliard on scholarship, where he shifted his focus from the organ to composition, studying with Paul Hindemith. He wrote for a wide range of ensembles and won accolades from all corners of the music world, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and an Emmy in 1965 for his score to the television documentary A Golden Prison: The Louvre. His contributions to the wind band repertoire are significant, and include Scenes from The Louvre, Variants on a Mediaeval Tune, Satiric Dances, and several other beloved works. Dello Joio died in 2008 at age 95 having never retired from composition.

Scenes from the Louvre comes from a 1964 television documentary produced by NBC News called A Golden Prison: The Louvre, for which Dello Joio provided the soundtrack. The documentary tells the history of the Louvre and its world-class collection of art, which is in many ways inseparable from the history of France. Dello Joio chose to use the music of Renaissance-era composers in his soundtrack in order to match the historical depth of the film. He collected the highlights of this Emmy-winning score into a five-movement suite for band in 1965, on a commission from Baldwin-Wallace College. The first movement, “Portals”, is the title music from the documentary, and it consists entirely of Dello Joio’s original material, complete with strident rhythms and bold 20th-century harmony. The second movement, “Children’s Gallery”, never actually appears in the film. It is a light-hearted theme and variations of Tielman Susato‘s Ronde et Saltarelle. The stately third movement is based on themes by Louis XIV’s court composer, Jean Baptiste Lully, and is aptly titled “The Kings of France”.

Takeda Lullaby

Benjamin Yeo (b. 1985)

Takeda Lullaby (Japanese: 竹田の子守唄 or Takeda no komoriuta) is a popular Japanese cradle song. It originated in Takeda, Fushimi, Kyoto. This song has long been sung among the people in the burakumin areas of Kyoto and Osaka in a slightly different form for a long time. During the 1960s, it was picked up as a theme song by the Buraku Liberation League, particularly its branch at Takeda.

Burakumin (“hamlet” people” were an outcast community at the bottom of the Japanese social order that had historically been the victim of severe discrimination and ostracism. These communities were often made up of those with occupations considered impure or tainted by death - such as ex-executioners, undertakers, workers in slaughterhouses, and butchers, or tanners. Professions such as these had severe social stigmas of kegare, or “defilement”, attached to them. A Burakumin neighborhood within metropolitan Tokyo was the last to be served by streetcar, and is the site of butcher and leather shops to this day.

In this lullaby a young girl comforts herself by singing about her miserable situation. One day she was forcibly sent away to work for a rich family at a village across the mountain. Every day as she works with a baby on her back she is reminded of her family, looking at the silhouette of the mountains in the direction of her homeland.

Takeda Lullaby English Translation:

I would hate baby-sitting beyond Bon Festival, The snow begins to fall, and the baby cries.

How can I be happy even when Bon Festival is here? I don’t have nice clothes or a sash to wear.

This child continues to cry and is mean to me. Every day I grow thinner.

I would quickly quit here and go back, To my parent’s home over there, To my parent’s home over there.

Bon Festival is a Japanese-Buddhist custom to honor the spirit of one’s ancestors. This Buddhist-Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places to visit and clean their ancestor’s graves. It has been celebrated in Japan for over 500 years and traditionally with a dance, known as Bon-Odori.

Soloists: Theo Fong - Alto Saxophone, Yaara Tzadikario - Clarinet, Sarah Jung - Piccolo

Silver Light

Benjamin Yeo (b. 1985)

This piece was commissioned by the Rocky Mountain Commissioning Project for the 11th Annual Colorado State University-Pueblo Festival of Winds, and is dedicated to Dick Mayne, for his illustrious life as a conductor and educator. The work opens with an energetic fanfare, featuring a lyrical trombone solo representing Dick’s influence, before flowing into the theme from “Where Columbines Grow”, one of two official state songs of Colorado. The “silver” was specially chosen to celebrate Dick’s retirement and “light” as inspired by Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world…”.

Soloists: Steve Cho - Trombone, Scott Hwang - Trumpet

Freshman Concert Band

Flute - Sophia Bian, Grace Gao, Leilani Griffin, Sophia Guibas, Jonathan Pan, Nikita Sane, Ethan Shih, Alyssa Tang

Clarinet - Jerry Guo, Sabrina Han, Kanaan Kuartei, Kira Kuartei, Noah Murase, Jiho Seo, Zsa Zsa Sperow

Bass Clarinet - Lynzee Clay, Josh Shin

Alto Saxophone - Alan Yue, Meni Gottesman, Ethan Hong, Neel Rangan, Daniel Zhang

Tenor Saxophone - Antonio Chang

Baritone Saxophone - Kunal Rajan

French Horn - Keegan Green, Alice Ouellette

Trumpet - Kaden Cho, Miles Heilman, Brian Lum, Lev Miller, Martin Moshfeghi, Taita Nakayama, Andreas Quertermous, Edward Wang, Zachary Wiener, Stephen Zhang

Euphonium - David Kim, Samuel Ren

Trombone - Ryan Fitzhugh, Shengkai Jiang, Nina Spasojevic

Tuba - Cyrus Silva Rezvani

Percussion - Joshua Aguirre Tapia, Nitzan Drori Retvizer, Elise Hu, Kingsley Jin, Winston Li, Rudra Pal, Randy Kwoun

Symphonic Band

Flute - Sara Dou, Camille Huynh, Asha Kannan, Jenny Lee, Fiona Li, Medha Mandal, Sophia Park, Ashley Seow, Zinna Shin, Ethan Shong, Nimisha Sivaraman, Linna Xia

Clarinet - Marc Chen, Julian Detering, Alison Li, Anika Seshadri, Reva Shah, Lulu Sperow, Syb van den Bedem, Angela Zhou

Bass Clarinet - Jason Liu, Andy Vega

Bassoon - Gregory Gurevich

Alto Saxophone - Katryn Ashley, Tyler Featherman, Cole Ford, Nikki Robison, Amelie Sarrazin, Isaac Zou

Tenor Saxophone - Nic Mejia, Emilia Roessig

Baritone Saxophone - Rohan Gupta

French Horn - Timon Cappella-Pimor, Lukas Jelks

Trumpet - Chris Brown, Kyra Bryant, Zach Chin, Charlie Deggeller, Andre Delvaux, Kaden Fort, Cameron How, Eugene Hsieh, Axel Johnson, Adi Mittal, Audrey Norton

Trombone - Adi Lane, Joey Loeb, Timur Marcacci, Alex Peters, Quinton Sterling, Langston Wu, Destiny Xia

Euphonium - Emma Sachs

Tuba - Arthur Khang Tran, Nathan Kirner

Percussion - Michael Chow, Gregoire Figueiredo, Max Garcia Gutierrez, John Kaliko, Alisa Novitskaya

Wind Ensemble

Flute - Silvia Arjona Garcia, Christina Ding, Lillian Ding, Sarah Jung, Ingrid Lee, Ananya Madabhushi, Ashley Medina, Kate Nam, Miranda Olbrich, Conrad Wong

Oboe - Erica Norton

Clarinet - Rafi Barbier, Nate Boxer, Daniel Chen, Ryan Choi, Koharu Masuda, Nate Rodden, Yaara Tzadikario, Eric Wang, Leo Yao, Amelia Yu

Bass Clarinet - Dave Chen, Matthew Lee

Bassoon - Alex Kirner, John Phillips, Rohan Rao

Alto Saxophone - Theo Fong, Mackenzie Green

Tenor Saxophone - Noah Milivojevic

Baritone Saxophone - Joseph Xu

French Horn - Maya Glazer, Simon Illouz, Elina Saab-Sunden, Issey Sone

Trumpet - Yu-Ting Chang, Hana Chang, Scott Hwang, Paul Kramer, Royce Lee, Galen Liu, Anika Smuts, Troy Woodley

Trombone - Felix Adams, Steve Cho, Wyatt Pedersen, Eric Wang, Zara Wang

Bass Trombone - Jonathan Yang

Euphonium - Aydan See

Tuba - Maxwell Chang, Jacob Liao

String Bass - Griffin Teller

Percussion - Eshan Gupta, Joseph Kim, Steven Li, Sawyer McKenna, Tyler Sheu, Maanasa Viswanath

Thank you!

As we conclude this evening's performance, we want to give our sincerest thanks to those who make music in the Palo Alto Unified School District possible.

Gunn Band and Orchestra Music Boosters

Booster Board Members

Greta Olbrich - President, Andrea Jelks – Treasurer, Catherine Phillips – Secretary, Claire Kirner – Membership, Elizabeth Lee – Publicity, Star Teachout - Volunteer Coordinator

TriM Music Honor Society (ushers and concert support) - Sandra Lewis, Advisor

Gunn Administration, Wendy Stratton - Principal

Kelly Martin, PAUSD VAPA Coordinator

Kari Johnson, PAUSD VAPA Administrative Assistant

Kyle Langdon, Supervisor of Theatre Facilities

Camille Kelly, Spangenberg Theatre Technician

Tonight's Parent Volunteers

Gunn Custodial Team